RELEASE-NOTES

   1 = MediaWiki release notes =
   2
   3 == Version 1.3.0pre-alpha ==
   4
   5 Look & layout:
   6 * New default layout 'MonoBook'
   7 * Print stylesheet now built-in to every page
   8 * More or less correct XHTML 1.0 (served as text/html by default)
   9
  10 Wiki features:
  11 * Image captions can now include links and other basic formatting
  12 * Image bounding box can be specified instead of width, e.g. as
  13   100x100px, making the image not wider than 100px and not higher
  14   than 100px, keeping aspect ratio.
  15 * Templates have been expanded with parameters, and separated from
  16   the MediaWiki: localization scheme.
  17 * Categories more or less work
  18
  19 Editing:
  20 * Automatic merging of edit conflicts that don't directly interfere
  21 * Edit summaries can now include basic formatting and links
  22
  23 Metadata and output:
  24 * Linked Creative Commons copyright metadata (optional)
  25 * RSS 2.0 feeds for Recent Changes, New Pages
  26
  27 Optional modules:
  28 * WikiHiero hieroglyphic module can be added (separate download)
  29 * Timeline module can be added (separate download).
  30   Requires ploticus.
  31 * TeX now has an experimental MathML output mode (incomplete)
  32
  33 Installation and upgrading:
  34 * The old install.php and update.php have been removed. In-place
  35   installation introduced in 1.2 is now the standard installation
  36   and upgrade method, see INSTALL for directions.
  37
  38 Database:
  39 * The links table has been changed to use a cur_id for l_from.
  40   The link tables must be converted on upgrade, which may entail
  41   some downtime.
  42
  43 Code and compatibility:
  44 * Should now run clean with error reporting set to E_ALL.
  45 * register_globals hack from 1.2 has been replaced with safer code
  46 * Bundled PHPTAL 0.7.0 from http://phptal.sourceforge.net/
  47   (with some patches)
  48 * Most image-related code moved to Image.php
  49 * More fixes for PHP 4.1.2 (thanks to Asheesh Laroia)
  50 * URL encoding fix for anchors
  51
  52 === Caveats ===
  53
  54 Some output, particularly involving user-supplied inline HTML, may not
  55 produce 100% valid or well-formed XHTML output. Testers are welcome to
  56 set $wgMimeType = "application/xhtml+xml"; to test for remaining problem
  57 cases, but this is not recommended on live sites. (This must be set for
  58 MathML to display properly in Mozilla.)
  59
  60
  61 == Version 1.2.5, 2004-05-01 ==
  62 * Fixed install problem with blank root password
  63 * Fixed Special:Emailuser/Username links
  64 * Fixed main-page edit links on fuzzy search results
  65 * Fixed wikipedia-interwiki.sql
  66 * Fixed install with apache2filter (ugly URLs)
  67 * IP in 'go' search brings up contributions
  68 * Switch from broken & to ? on top-level wiki URL hack
  69
  70 == Version 1.2.4, 2004-04-13 ==
  71
  72 * Fixed edit toolbar in Mozilla
  73 * Diff links in Contributions for 'top' edits
  74 * Fixed Nostalgia skin drop-down for register_globals off
  75 * Backported optional open proxy blocker
  76 * Backported $wgWhitelistRead
  77 * $wgCapitalLinks option to force full case sensitivity in titles
  78 * Cleaned up error handling when can't talk to database
  79 * Disabled unsafe command-line installer (remove the "die()" call to use)
  80
  81 == Version 1.2.3, 2004-04-02 ==
  82
  83 * Fixed an in-place install bug with non-root MySQL user
  84 * Fixed history diff checkboxes bug on titles with ampersands
  85 * Fixed printable link bug on special pages with parameters
  86 * Fixed bug that broke IP blocking w/o memcached
  87 * Turns off E_NOTICE warnings if PHP settings have them on
  88   (you can grope in and turn this off if you like to debug)
  89
  90 == Version 1.2.2, 2004-03-28 ==
  91
  92 * Fixed an upgrade bug introduced in 1.2.1.
  93 * Disabled $wgUseCategoryMagic, which feature is incomplete broken
  94
  95 == Version 1.2.1, 2004-03-27 ==
  96
  97 Installation, compatibility, security fixlets:
  98 * Detect use of PHP as CGI and disable index.php/Title URLs
  99 * Try to auto-create math tmp & output directories if not present
 100 * Disable Asksql in default install ($wgAllowSysopQueries)
 101 * Better handling of get_magic_quotes_gpc (apostrophe problems)
 102 * French localisation no longer hard-codes "Wikipedia" name
 103
 104 == Version 1.2.0 ==
 105
 106 New features in 1.2:
 107 * Image resizing/thumbnail generation
 108 * Stricter upload file extension blacklist and whitelist options
 109 * More flexible blocking system; time period may be set
 110 * Handier sysop account management. An account marked "bureaucrat"
 111   may assign sysop access to other accounts via Special:Makesysop.
 112   (The exact details of this may change in the future)
 113 * Support for a squid cache with explicit purging of cached anon pages
 114 * Optional compression of old revision text (requires zlib support)
 115 * Fuzzy title search (experimental, requires memcached)
 116 * Page rendering cache (experimental)
 117 * Editing toolbar to demonstrate wiki syntax to newbies
 118   (off by default in user preferences)
 119 * Support for authenticated SMTP outgoing e-mail (experimental)
 120 * It's now possible to assign sysop accounts from within the wiki.
 121   An account with this ability must be labeled with the "bureaucrat"
 122   privilege, such as the 'Developer' account created by the install.
 123
 124 Fixes and tweaks:
 125 * Now works with register_globals off!
 126 * Works with short tags disabled.
 127 * Should work out of the box on MySQL 3.2.x again. On 4.x set
 128   $wgEnablePersistentLC = true; to turn on the link cache table
 129   for a slight rendering speed boost.
 130 * rebuildMessages.php can now selectively update new messages, or
 131   overwrite everything.
 132 * Various bug fixes.
 133 * Other stuff we forgot.
 134 * Documentation more out of date than ever before!
 135
 136 === Behavior changes ===
 137
 138 * wiki.phtml and redirect.phtml are now renamed to index.php and redirect.php
 139   The old names are provided too for compatibility, but make sure they don't
 140   conflict if you've been putting other files in your wiki.
 141 * Uploaded filenames are more strictly checked than before. See bits in
 142   DefaultSettings.php to tweak this behavior to your needs.
 143 * Database messages are now enabled by default, so the interface messages can
 144   be tweaked through the wiki with a sysop account. Disable this if you
 145   don't want the performance hit.
 146
 147 === Database changes ===
 148
 149 An index was added to recentchanges table to speed up Newpages
 150 (patch-rc-newindex.sql for manual updaters).
 151
 152 Expiration date field has been added to ipblocks table
 153 (patch-ipb_expiry.sql for manual updaters).
 154
 155
 156 == Version 1.1.0, 2003-12-08 ==
 157
 158 This is the new production release. Any following 1.1.x releases are expected
 159 to contain only bug fixes; developments of new features will go towards a 1.2.0
 160 release.
 161
 162 New features in 1.1:
 163 * New wiki table syntax:
 164   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide:_Using_tables
 165 * User-editable interface messages:
 166   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
 167 * XML-wrapped page source export with optional history:
 168   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_import_and_export
 169   (There is not yet an import function!)
 170 * "Magic words"
 171
 172 Fixes and tweaks:
 173 * linkscc table caches link data for rendering; faster rebuildlinks.php
 174 * Numerous bugs in Cologne Blue skin fixed
 175 * Login gives warning about missing cookies
 176 * Block log, protection log added; deletion log now includes undeletions
 177 * Deletion & upload logs now escape comment text properly
 178 * Problems with <nowiki> segments in section titles etc mitigated
 179 * Contributions offset and minor edit bugs fixed
 180 * Whatlinkshere now sorted alphabetically
 181 * Various exciting new profiling options.
 182 * Debug log is off by default.
 183 * Various small bugs fixed.
 184
 185 Internal changes:
 186 * wfQuery has had a second parameter inserted, DB_READ or DB_WRITE. This value
 187   is not actually used so far.
 188 * Partial code for categories and Smarty template-based skins is in the tree
 189   but disabled.
 190 * Parts of Article.php have been moved to EditPage.php and ImagePage.php.
 191
 192 New translations:
 193 * fi - Finnish
 194 * ia - Interlingua
 195 * no - Norwegian
 196 * sk - Slovak
 197 * ta - Tamil
 198
 199 === Database changes ===
 200
 201 "linkscc" table added. If upgrading manually (rather than with update.php),
 202 run maintenance/archives/patch-linkscc.sql to create the table.
 203
 204 Older releases were dated snapshots from the old 'stable' branch:
 205
 206 == mediawiki-20031118 ==
 207
 208 * Image deletion fixed.
 209 * Deletion of image old revisions now restricted to sysops
 210   (this is an irreversible action and not well logged)
 211 * Fixed maintenance scripts broken by last release's security fix
 212 * Many errors in rebuildlinks script fixed.
 213
 214 == mediawiki-20031117 ==
 215
 216 * SECURITY FIX: stricter checking of include path
 217 * Fixed user contributions next/prev bug
 218 * Login cookies now have the database name prefixed to allow wikis
 219   to coexist in the same domain. This will invalidate any old saved
 220   password cookies.
 221 * Update cache timestamp when talk pages are created
 222 * Saving the login form in Mozilla no longer blanks password in prefs.
 223 * Check existence of source page before performing a move.
 224 * Detect invalid titles in Special:Allpages
 225 * Q-encode headers on outgoing inter-user e-mail
 226 * Updates to some translations.
 227 * Added table of contents border/bg to Cologne Blue, Nostalgia skins
 228 * Protected pages no longer appear unprotected when visited via redirect
 229 * Swapped old Wikipedia logo for the MediaWiki sunflower logo
 230 * install.php, update.php print warning on old PHP versions,
 231   added compatibility functions that might or might not help
 232
 233 No database changes since 20031107; upgrading should be clean.
 234
 235
 236 == mediawiki-20031107 ==
 237
 238 * Fixed various bugs!
 239 * Some speed improvements from tweaks to the table indexes
 240 * Limited support for memcached (see below)
 241 * New translations (see below)
 242 * Interwiki link data now kept in database for flexibility
 243 * Friendlier read-only source view if asked to edit a page when
 244   the db is locked or the page is protected.
 245 * Normal IP blocks auto-expire after 24 hours
 246 * Optional support for blocking usernames
 247 * Uploads disabled by default (see below)
 248
 249
 250 === Security note ===
 251
 252 Uploads are now disabled by default. If you've set up a secure configuration
 253 you can reenable uploads by putting:
 254
 255   $wgDisableUploads = false;
 256
 257 into LocalSettings.php.
 258
 259 Earlier versions of MediaWiki included a bug that potentially allows logged-
 260 in users to delete arbitrary files in directories writable by the web server
 261 user by manually feeding false form data; this is now fixed.
 262
 263 As a reminder, disable PHP script execution in the upload directory!
 264 You may also wish to serve HTML pages as plaintext to prevent cookie-
 265 stealing JavaScript attacks. Example Apache config fragment:
 266
 267   <Directory "/Library/MediaWiki/web/upload">
 268      # Ignore .htaccess files
 269      AllowOverride None
 270
 271      # Serve HTML as plaintext
 272      AddType text/plain .html .htm .shtml
 273
 274      # Don't run arbitrary PHP code.
 275      php_admin_flag engine off
 276
 277      # If you've other scripting languages, disable them too.
 278   </Directory>
 279
 280
 281 === Database updates ===
 282
 283 If you're using update.php, the necessary database changes should
 284 be made automatically.
 285
 286 To manually upgrade your database from the 2003-08-29 release, run the
 287 following SQL scripts from the maintenance subdirectory:
 288
 289   archives/patch-ipblocks.sql
 290   archives/patch-interwiki.sql
 291   archives/patch-indexes.sql
 292   interwiki.sql
 293
 294 To copy in the Wikipedia language-prefix interwikis as well, add:
 295
 296   wikipedia-interwiki.sql
 297
 298
 299 === Translations ===
 300
 301 New interface localization files are included for:
 302   fy Frisian
 303   ro Romanian
 304   sl Slovene
 305   sq Albanian
 306   sr Serbian
 307
 308
 309 === Memcached ===
 310
 311 Memcached is a distributed cache system. See http://www.danga.com/memcached/
 312 MediaWiki can optionally use memcached to store some data between calls
 313 to reduce load on the database. Currently this is limited to user and
 314 talk page notification data, interwiki prefix/URL matches, and the
 315 UTF-8 conversion tables.
 316
 317 MediaWiki includes version 1.0.10 of the (GPL'd) PHP memcached client by
 318 Ryan Gilfether; if memcached is disabled it acts as a dummy object with
 319 minimal overhead.
 320
 321 To use memcached you'll need PHP installed with sockets support (this is not
 322 in the default configure options). See docs/memcached for some more details.
 323
 324 Additionally, you can store login session data in memcached instead of the
 325 local filesystem, which can help to enable load-balancing by letting login
 326 sessions transparently work on multiple front-end web servers. (The primary
 327 other issue is with uploads, which requires some care in handling.)
 328
 329 To enable this, set $wgSessionsInMemcached = true; and set $wgCookieDomain
 330 appropriately if exposing multiple hostnames. This system is new and may be
 331 volatile; login sessions will fail dramatically if memcached is unavailable
 332 when this option is turned on.
 333
 334
 335 === Online documentation ===
 336
 337 Documentation for both end-users and site administrators is currently being
 338 built up on Meta-Wikipedia, and is covered under the GNU Free Documentation
 339 License:
 340
 341   http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide
 342
 343
 344 === Mailing list ===
 345
 346 A MediaWiki-l mailing list has been set up distinct from the Wikipedia
 347 wikitech-l list:
 348
 349   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
 350
 351
 352 === UseModWiki import script ===
 353
 354 A stripped-down UseModWiki import script is available in the maintenance
 355 subdirectory. It is incomplete and requires a lot of manual clean-up, but
 356 does function for the brave and pure of heart.
 357
 358
 359 === Test suite removed ===
 360
 361 The unmaintained Java-based test suite has been removed from the tarball
 362 release. If you really want it you can check it out from CVS.
 363
 364
 365 == mediawiki-20030829 ==
 366
 367 First release under MediaWiki name.